Dimensions

In all the words spoken there is a direct ratio (ration?) of words unspoken, a litany of alternative lives, things not uttered that could have changed the course, changed the moments. The alternate dimensions.

I follow the course knowing that in a sound, group of letters, then groups of words and groups of groups, the course changes. Enter in one look and posture and a small smile, and then, life-altering touch. Physical shifting of one’s life through connecting skin to skin, eye to eye, one single word.

So that other me, the one who who grew stronger faster, immediately after another opening, she is leading the publication in that big ol’ city. She is perpetuating the course of communication on the highest levels, and she is cold. Is that the reality? Disconnected to move up, because to hold on is to stay below. She was here.

And the other, the one who stayed in California… she learned to surf and play guitar and married the one who never got a real chance, only that small window. And did they have four kids, beautiful and sweet also? Did they read poetry lying in the desert, heat pouring in and out simultaneously? Did they find that the love of fifteen was just as powerful as the love of 35, 75?

And the other? The one who decided in the midst of one daily letter, that it was she that was done, she that would not hang onto the space between, the time, the distance, not one more second. That she would draft the Dear John. And send it, no, hand -fucking- deliver it. That one, she did not die a little that day, but lived earlier, and met the impending disaster head-on with all her faculties, her entire heart and person, ready to fight like a girl uninterrupted, untainted by promises left empty, placed into emptiness by the other. Those ridiculous promises, alternative facts, and she walked away calmly with poise and tears and held her head in the highest place it could be, before she could be ruined, before she grew up. She was there.

For the one who married the wrong man before marrying the right man who turned into the wrong one for her, but the right one for her daughters. The girl who settled, she was also wrong and very right. The one who chose money, status. The one who loved things.

And opposite to her, she who gave them all up, lived on the street. The one who moved, moved oh so slightly, and the one who moved into the world-the entire world, made her way across the distances, into language and smells and taste and all things unknown. The one who yearned for more, yearned for less. The one who said thank you, and or more importantly “no, thank you”. The one who took the reins, reigned over her paths. The one who still cries, the one who can’t. The one who broke her own smile, broke so many others. The one who overmedicated, the one who refused. The one who saw pain and said “come and fucking get it”. The one who ran farther and faster letting the pain move through her not then, but when she stopped. Because eventually you always stop. She was here.

The one who disappeared into the poem on the fridge. The one holding the poem, the one who was the fridge. The vodka in the freezer. The bleach in the cabinet. The one who drove and collided with the bridge, the frozen river. The one who slipped under the surface and breathed. The one who rose above it and laughed. The one who lead instead of followed, the one who climbed the tree higher and higher and higher and then jumped and landing on her own two feet, pulled up the bootstraps, cut the bootstraps, tethers flying, floated beyond to meet the others, to meet herself.

The one who got a boob job. The one who was burned, dismembered. The one who stayed covered, the one who undressed to skin and light forever. The one who discovered cold fusion, discovered love. The one who discovered herself. She was here.

The one who went away to school, stayed at home, called her father more, spoke to him alive more than after, the one who wasn’t afraid, who left to be better sooner, the one who stayed no matter what, stayed with courage, with trust.

The one who drank herself to death, the one who ate one too many pills, the one who slept with all of them, none of them. The one who became a nun, lawyer, president.

The one who saved a nation, a gender, a people, a child. The one who stayed in bed, grew obese, starved herself to death. The one that never got out of inpatient, the one that became patient. The one that didn’t make it. The one who trusted herself. The one who wore black and screwed little holes into her skin. The one who drew on people with permanent ink her words, her heart. She was here.

The one who found the cabin in the woods, stayed, became part of the trees. The one who spoke in tongues, baptized herself. The one who drank from the cup every week, every day, every hour. The one who burned skin in the pursuit of death, life? Who yearned for music, made a soundtrack for her life in every moment. And the opus became famous and silent. She was here.

And the one who stayed with the man who first made her remember that she too was graceful. She would always be thinking and rethinking, and would never have met another memory conjurer, epiphany stirrer. And she would be less than. Less than good, immersed in shame and a pursuit of loving one for all the other failed loves in that dimension, for the one failed love, the biggest broken promise. The weight of that burden would have buried her underneath the mushrooms and cannabis, under the birch trees, next to the scared rabbit, the crow’s beak beating into her, pecking at her eyes so that they wouldn’t have to see how she failed to be enough, because she hadn’t walked the path that would lead her to her own independence. The one who loved the sound of her own voice, her own reflection, her own song. The one who couldn’t see the beauty in every single piece, even the awful, even the evil. The one that could. She was here.

Choosing your own adventure, disaster, glowing successes, the other country lanes, turnpikes, mountain paths, ocean currents.

The other one, the one that stayed in this life by grace, by miracle, she is here laughing, floating with intent, writing the stories of all the shes, her space. And she is here. Tangible, full of words, hope, strung together to make this version, this dimension.

One second, will they converge into one, all facets of the alternatives, the hopes, failures, deaths, births. The soul will explode! Sprinkle itself onto other paths, another’s infinite route.